Jo Schornikow

★★★★ Altar KEELED SCALES. CD/DL/LP

Music without borders: the Nashville-based Australian’s third album ventures down the LA soft-rock highway.

JO SCHORNIKOW’S first two albums were sparser affairs, but

Altar shares the same glowing reprise of ’70s singer-songwriter soft rock as Schornikow’s partner, Matthew ‘Phosphorescent’ Houck’s – with whom she also plays piano. Her gorgeous take on the form has similar brooding notes, but a breezier touch, and a voice that slides alongside Sharon Van Etten. Mid-’70s Stevie Nicks might also be a touchstone, contrasting radiant melody with disarming feelings of insecurity; in this case, the couple’s move to Nashville, new parenthood and feeling like a stranger in a strange land. Altar’s lyrics mix the illogic of dreams –

“Spiders in mind/ Drop down through mouths and fingertips sometimes” she murmurs in the semi-ambient murk of Spiders – with moments of stark clarity: “I’m calling fear and boredom/You’re calling names I’m not repeating,” Schornikow declares in the perfect-pop glide of Visions.